Dec. 23, 2011

Searching For A Ghost Bird

No one is sure whether the Imperial woodpecker is extinct--the two-foot-tall relative of the Ivory-billed woodpecker lives in a remote mountain range in Mexico, and was last credibly spotted in the 1990s. Tim Gallagher, editor of Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Living Bird magazine, describes a hair-raising expedition to try to save the woodpecker and make it home unscathed.Bird and projector sounds courtesy Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ronald Thorpe, Tim Gallagher.